Posts Tagged ‘ASSASSINATION’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 2, 2016 at 12:02 am
“John and Robert Kennedy knew what they were doing. They waged a vicious war against Fidel Castro–a war someone had to lose.”
And the loser turned out to be John F. Kennedy.
So writes investigative reporter Gus Russo in Live By the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK, published in 1998.
In what is almost certainly the definitive account of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Russo reaches some startling–but highly documented–conclusions:
- Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated Kennedy.
- He did it alone.
- Oswald, a former Marine, was a committed Marxist–whose hero was Castro.
- The CIA’s ongoing campaign to overthrow and/or assassinate Castro was an open secret throughout the Gulf.
- Oswald visited New Orleans in the spring of 1963.
- There he learned that Castro was in the crosshairs of the CIA.
- For this, he blamed John F. Kennedy.
- Oswald told his Russian-born wife, Marina: “Fidel Castro needs defenders. I’m going to join his army of volunteers.”
- Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, murdered Oswald because he was distraught over Kennedy’s death.
- Ruby was not part of a Mafia conspiracy to silence Oswald.
- Skeptics of the Warren Commission–which concluded that Oswald had acted alone–asked the wrong question: “Who killed Kennedy?”
- They should have asked: “Why was he killed?”
- The answer–according to Russo: “The Kennedys’ relentless pursuit of Castro and Cuba backfired in tragedy on that terrible day in November, 1963.”
Another book well worth reading about America’s Cuban obsession during the early 1960s is American Tabloid, by James Ellroy.
Although a novel, it vividly captures the atmosphere of intrigue, danger and sleaziness that permeated that era in a way that dry, historical documents never can.
“The 50’s are finished,” reads its paperback dust jacket. “Zealous young lawyer Robert Kennedy has a red-hot jones to nail Jimmy Hoffa. JFK has his eyes on the Oval Office.
“J. Edgar Hoover is swooping down on the Red Menace. Howard Hughes is dodging subpoenas and digging up Kennedy dirt. And Castro is mopping up the bloody aftermath of his new Communist nation….
“Mob bosses, politicos, snitches, psychos, fall guys and femmes fatale. They’re mixing up a Molotov cocktail guaranteed to end the country’s innocence with a bang.”
Among the legacies of America’s twisted romance with anti-Castro Cubans:
- Following the JFK assassination, there was a cover-up.
- Its purpose: To protect the reputation of the United States Government–and that of its newly-martyred President.
- The CIA and FBI concealed the CIA-Mafia assassination plots from the Warren Commission assigned to investigate Kennedy’s murder.
- Other government officials participating in the cover-up included Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson.
- Ironically, this secrecy ignited the widespread–and false–belief that the President had died at the hands of a government conspiracy.
- Robert Kennedy feared that his relentless pursuit of Castro might have led Castro to “take out” JFK first.
- Fearing his own assassination if he continued Kennedy’s efforts to murder Castro, President Johnson ordered the CIA to halt its campaign to overthrow and/or assassinate the Cuban leader.
- The huge Cuban community throughout Florida–and especially Miami–continues to exert a blackmailing influence on American politics.
- Right-wing politicians from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump have reaped electoral rewards by catering to the demands of this hate-obsessed voting block.
- These Cuban ex-patriots hope that the United States will launch a full-scale military invasion of the island to remove Castro.
- Having grown rich and soft in the United States, they fear to risk their own lives by returning to Cuba to overthrow the Castro regime–as he had overthrown Fulgencio Batista.
- Only President Barack Obama had the political courage to re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba–in 2015.
- This occurred long after the United States had done so with such former enemies as the Soviet Union, China and Vietnam.
- With President-elect Donald Trump due to take office in January, 2017, America’s future relations with Cuba remain in doubt.
The Cuban Missile Crisis remains the single most dangerous moment of the 50-year Cold War, when the world stood only minutes away from nuclear Armageddon.
That crisis stemmed from the American Right’s twisted obsession with Cuba, an obsession that continues today.
So what are the lessons to be learned from that obsession?
- It is long past time to demand major changes in our foreign policy toward Cuba.
- It’s time to end the half-century contamination of American politics by those Cubans who live only for their hatred of Castro–and those political candidates who live to exploit it.
- (For example: Marco Rubio got elected U.S. Senator from Florida in 2010 by claiming that his parents had been forced to leave Cuba in 1959, after Fidel Castro took power. In fact, they had left Cuba in 1956–during the Batista dictatorship.)
- It’s time to end this wag-the-dog relationship. A population of about 1,700,000 Cuban exiles living in Florida should not be allowed to shape the domestic and foreign policy of a nation of 300 million.
- Those who continue to hate–or love–Fidel Castro should be left to their own private feud. But that is a feud they should settle on their own island, and not from the shores of the United States.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 1, 2016 at 10:46 am
On October 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy went on nationwide TV to announce the discovery of the missiles and his blockade of Cuba.
He warned that any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation would be regarded as an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union–and would trigger “a full retaliatory response” upon the U.S.S.R.
President John F. Kennedy addresses the nation
And he demanded that the Soviets remove all of their offensive weapons from Cuba:
“The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are, but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world.
“The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.”
On October 26, the United States raised the readiness level of SAC forces to DEFCON 2–the step just short of war. For the only time in U.S. history, B-52 bombers were dispersed to various locations and made ready to take off, fully equipped, on 15 minutes’ notice.
Other measures taken included:
- One-eighth of America’s 1,436 bombers were on airborne alert.
- About 145 intercontinental ballistic missiles stood on ready alert.
- Air Defense Command redeployed 161 nuclear-armed interceptors to 16 dispersal fields within nine hours with one-third maintaining 15-minute alert status.
- Twenty-three nuclear-armed B-52 were sent to orbit points within striking distance of the Soviet Union.
An invasion date was set for October 29. But the Kennedy Administration–and the American military–didn’t know that the Russian soldiers guarding the missiles had been armed with tactical nuclear weapons.
Had the Marines gone in, those mini-nukes would have been used. And a fullscale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union would have almost certainly followed.
At the height of the crisis, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy offered a solution.
Khrushchev had sent two teletypes to Kennedy. The first had agreed to remove the missiles, but the second had demanded that the United States remove its own missiles from Turkey, which bordered the Soviet Union.
Robert Kennedy’s solution: The administration should ignore the second message–and announce that it had accepted Khrushchev’s offer to remove the missiles.
After this announcement was made, President Kennedy said to his advisers: “It can go either way now.”
John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office
The crisis ended on October 28. Under enormous pressure, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba.
Behind his decision lay a secret promise by the Kennedy administration to remove its obsolete nuclear missiles from Turkey, which bordered the Soviet Union. And a public pledge to not invade Cuba.
On the night the crisis ended, there occurred a prophetic exchange between the two Kennedy brothers.
JFK: “Maybe this is the night I should go to the theater”–a reference to Abraham Lincoln’s fatal attendance of Ford’s Theater at the end of the Civil War.
RFK: “If you go, I want to go with you.”
John F. and Robert F. Kennedy
But President Kennedy was not finished with Castro. While continuing the campaign of sabotage throughout Cuba, the Kennedys were preparing something far bigger: A fullscale American invasion of the island.
On October 4, 1963, the Joint Chiefs of Staff submitted its latest version of the invasion plan, known as OPLAN 380-63. Its timetable went:
- January, 1964: Infiltration into Cuba by Cuban exiles.
- July 15, 1964: U.S. conventional forces join the fray.
- August 3, 1964: All-out U.S. air strikes on Cuba.
- October 1, 1964: Full-scale invasion to install “a government friendly to the U.S.”
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert Kennedy–referring to the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor–had resisted demands for a “sneak attack” on Cuba by saying: “I don’t want my brother to be the Tojo of the 1960s.”
Now the Kennedys planned such an attack on Cuba just one month before the November, 1964 Presidential election.
Then fate–in the unlikely figure of Lee Harvey Oswald–intervened.
On November 22, 1963, while the President rode through Dallas in an open-air automobile, a rifle-wielding assassin opened fire. He scored two hits on Kennedy–in the back of the neck and head. The second wound proved instantly fatal.
The nation and the world were shocked–and plunged into deep mourning.
But for some of those who had waged a secret, lethal war against Fidel Castro for the previous two years, Kennedy’s death–at least in retrospect–didn’t come as a surprise.
Robert Kennedy, in particular, spent the remaining years of his life agonizing over the possibility that his highly personal war against Castro had backfired.
That Castro, fed up with the CIA’s assassination plots against him, had retaliated with one of his own.
Robert Kennedy’s fears and guilt were compounded by the fact that, while waging war on Castro, he had waged an equally ruthless crusade against organized crime.
He knew that some of the mobsters he had tried to send to prison had played a major role in the CIA’s efforts to “hit” Castro. Had the Mafia–believing itself the victim of a double-cross–put out a “contract” on JFK instead?
It was a question that haunted him until the day he died.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 30, 2016 at 12:02 am
In April, 1961, the CIA tried to overthrow the Communist regime of Cuba’s “Maximum Leader,” Fidel Castro, at the Bay of Pigs.
When that failed, President John F. Kennedy ordered Castro’s removal through a campaign of sabotage and assassination.
These covert operatives became known within the CIA as the Special Group, and were ultimately supervised by Robert F. Kennedy, the President’s brother and Attorney General.
The war against Castro became known within the CIA as Operation Mongoose.
But not everyone in the CIA was enthusiastic about the “get Castro” effort.
“Everyone at CIA was surprised at Kennedy’s obsession with Fidel,” recalled Sam Halpern, who was assigned to the Cuba Project. “They thought it was a waste of time. We all knew [Fidel] couldn’t hurt us. Most of us at CIA initially liked Kennedy, but why go after this little guy?
“One thing is for sure: Kennedy wasn’t doing it out of national security concerns. It was a personal thing. The Kennedy family felt personally burnt by the Bay of Pigs and sought revenge.”
It was all-out war. Among the tactics used:
- Hiring Cuban gangsters to murder Cuban police officials and Soviet technicians.
- Sabotaging mines.
- Paying up to $100,000 per “hit” for the murder or kidnapping of Cuban officials.
- Using biological and chemical warfare against the Cuban sugar industry.
“Bobby (Kennedy) wanted boom and bang all over the island,” recalled Halpern. “It was stupid. The pressure from the White House was very great.”
Among that “boom and bang” were a series of assassination plots against Castro, in which the Mafia was to be a key player.
Chicago Mobster Johnny Rosselli proposed a simple plan: through its underworld connections in Cuba, the Mafia would recruit a Cuban in Castro’s entourage, such as a waiter or bodyguard, who would poison him.
The CIA’s Technical Services division produced a botulinus toxin which was then injected into Castro’s favorite brand of cigars. The CIA also produced simpler botulinus toxin pills that could be dissolved in his food or drink.
But the deputized Mafia contacts failed to deliver any of the poisons to Castro.
Rosselli told the CIA that the first poisoner had been discharged from Castro’s employ before he could kill him, and the back-up agent got “cold feet.”
Other proposals or attempts included:
- Planting colorful seashells rigged to explode at a site where Castro liked to go skindiving.
- Trying to arrange for his being presented with a wetsuit impregnated with noxious bacteria and mold spores, or with lethal chemical agents.
- Attempting to infect Castro’s scuba regulator with tuberculous bacilli.
- Trying to douse his handkerchiefs, tea and coffee with other lethal bacteria.
Former members of the Kennedy Administration later insisted that neither John nor Robert Kennedy knew or approved of these assassination plots. But the sheer weight of available evidence indicates otherwise.
Bobby, in particular, was constantly pressing the CIA to “do something” about Castro. In the world of covert action, words like “Kill Castro” aren’t committed to paper. Or even spoken.
Castro, rightly seeing his life and regime threatened, appealed to Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, for assistance.
1960s poster of Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev
Keizers [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D
Khrushchev was quick to comply: “We must not allow the communist infant to be strangled in its crib,” he told members of his inner circle.
By October, 1962, the Soviet Union had sent more than
- 40,000 soldiers,
- 1,300 field pieces,
- 700 anti-aircraft guns,
- 350 tanks and
- 150 jets
to Cuba to deter another invasion.
Most importantly, Khrushchev began supplying Castro with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
Their discovery, on October 15, 1962, ignited the single most dangerous confrontation of the 50-year Cold War.
Suddenly, the United States and the Soviet Union–bristling with nuclear weapons–found themselves on the brink of nuclear war.
At the time, Kennedy officials claimed they couldn’t understand why Khrushchev had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. “Maybe Khrushchev’s gone mad” was a typical public musing.
This remained the official American view for years afterward–as depicted in Robert Kennedy’s memoir, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis, published in 1969, the year after his death.
No admission was made that JFK had been waging a no-holds-barred campaign to overthrow the Cuban government and assassinate its leader.
The same proved true for the 1974 doc-u-drama, The Missiles of October, starring William Devane as John F. Kennedy and Martin Sheen as Robert Kennedy.
On October 16, President Kennedy was informed of the missile installations. He immediately convened a group of his 12 most important advisers, which became known as Ex-Comm, for Executive Committee.
Then followed seven days of guarded and intense debate by Kennedy and his advisers. Some of the participants–such as Air Force General Curtis LeMay–urged an all-out air strike against the missile sites.
Others–such as Adlai Stevenson, the United States delegate to the United Nations–urged a reliance on quiet diplomacy.
It was Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara who suggested a middle course: A naval blockade–a “quarantine” in Kennedy’s softened term–around Cuba. This would hopefully prevent the arrival of more Soviet offensive weapons on the island.
Finally, the President decided to to impose a naval blockade.
On October 22, Kennedy went on nationwide TV to announce the discovery of the missiles and his blockade of Cuba.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 29, 2016 at 12:08 am
On November 25, Fidel Castro, Cuba’s longtime “Maximum Leader,” died at the age of 90.
Old age and disease finally achieved what years of plotting by CIA and Mafia assassins could not.
To his supporters he was a tireless champion of the poor and a foe of American imperialism. To his enemies he was a ruthless dictator who drove his country to economic ruin in the name of a failed ideology–communism.
His reign began on January 1, 1959, when he swept triumphantly into Havana after a two-year guerrilla campaign against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Fidel Castro
Almost immediately, hundreds of thousands of Cubans began fleeing to America. The first émigrés were more than 215,000 Batista followers. The exodus increased, peaking at approximately 78,000 in 1962.
In October, 1962, Castro stopped regularly scheduled travel between the two countries, and asylum seekers began sailing from Cuba to Florida.
Between 1962 and 1979, hundreds of thousands of Cubans entered the United States under the Attorney General’s parole authority.
By 2008, more than 1.24 million Cubans were living in the United States, mostly in South Florida, where the population of Miami was about one-third Cuban. Their sheer numbers transformed the state’s political, economic and cultural life. And not entirely for the better.
Many of these Cubans viewed themselves as political exiles, rather than immigrants, hoping to eventually return to Cuba after its Communist regime fell from power.
The large number of Cubans in South Florida, particularly in Miami’s “Little Havana,” allowed them to preserve their culture and customs to a degree rare for immigrant groups.
With so many discontented immigrants concentrated in Florida, they became a potential force for politicians to court.
And the issue guaranteed to sway their votes was unrelenting hostility to Castro. Unsurprisingly, most of their votes went to Right-wing Republicans.
John F. Kennedy was the first President to face this dilemma.
During the closing months of the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the CIA had begun training Cuban exiles for an invasion of their former homeland.
The exiles’ goal: To do what Castro had done–seek refuge in the mountains and launch a successful anti-Castro revolution.
But word of the coming invasion quickly leaked: The exiles were terrible secret-keepers. (A joke at the CIA went: “A Cuban thinks a secret is something you tell to only 300 people.”)
Kennedy insisted the invasion must appear to be an entirely Cuban enterprise. He refused to commit U.S. Marines and Air Force bombers.
More than 1,400 invaders landed on April 17, 1961 at the Bay of Pigs–and were quickly overwhelmed, with hundreds of the men taken prisoner.
Kennedy publicly took the blame for its failure: “Victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.” But privately he seethed, and ordered the CIA to redouble its efforts to remove Castro at all costs.
To make certain his order was carried out, he appointed his brother, Robert–then Attorney General–to oversee the CIA’s “Castro removal” program.
Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy
It’s here that America’s obsession with Cuba entered its darkest and most disgraceful period.
The CIA and the Mafia entered into an unholy alliance to assassinate Castro–each for its own benefit:
- The CIA wanted to please Kennedy.
- The mobsters wanted to regain their casino and brothel holdings that had made Cuba their private playground in pre-Castro times. They also hoped to use their pose as patriots to win immunity from future prosecution.
The CIA supplied poisons and explosives to various members of the Mafia. It was then up to the mobsters to assassinate Castro.
The CIA asked Johnny Roselli, a mobster linked to the Chicago syndicate, to go to Florida in 1961 and 1962 to organize assassination teams of Cuban exiles. They were to infiltrate their homeland and assassinate Castro.
Johnny Roselli
Rosselli called upon two other crime figures: Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana and Santos Trafficante, the Costra Nostra chieftain for Tampa, for assistance.
Sam Giancana
Giancana, using the name “Sam Gold” in his dealings with the CIA, was meanwhile being hounded by the FBI on direct orders of Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
The mobsters were authorized to offer $150,000 to anyone who would kill Castro and were promised any support the Agency could yield.
Giancana was to locate someone who was close enough to Castro to be able to drop pills into his food. Trafficante would serve as courier to Cuba, helping to make arrangements for the murder on the island.
Rosselli was to be the main link between all of the participants in the plot.
The available sources disagree on what actually happened. Some believe that the Mob made a genuine effort to “whack” Fidel.
Others are convinced the mobsters simply ran a scam on the government. They pretended to carry out their “patriotic duty” while in fact making no effort at all to penetrate Castro’s security.
The CIA’s war against Castro was known as Operation Mongoose–the mongoose being a traditional enemy of the cobra. And those entrusted with this assignment were known as the Special Group.
“We were hysterical about Castro at about the time of the Bay of Pigs and thereafter,” Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara later testified before Congress about these efforts. “And there was pressure from JFK and RFK to do something about Castro.”
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In Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on October 12, 2016 at 12:10 am
Robert Payne, author of the bestselling biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (1973), described Hitler’s “negotiating” style thusly:
“Although Hitler prized his own talents as a negotiator, a man always capable of striking a good bargain, he was totally lacking in finesse.
“He was incapable of bargaining. He was like a man who goes up to a fruit peddler and threatens to blow his brains out if he does not sell his applies at the lowest possible price.”
What was true for Adolf Hitler is equally true for Donald Trump, the 2016 Republican nominee for President of the United States.
Most recently his vindictive streak was on nationwide display during his second Presidential debate with Hillary Clinton: “If I win I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation–there has never been so many lies and so much deception.”
While this has played well with Trump’s essentially Fascistic followers, even conservatives like political columnist Charles Krauthammer have disagreed with it:
“I’m one of those who thinks there was a miscarriage of justice in not indicting her. But the problem here is the pattern from Trump.
“He has spoken about using the powers of the government to go after other opponents like the publisher of The Washington Post.
“Do we want to invest in him all the powers of the government if he acts where he seems to want to carry out vendettas?”
Charles Krauthammer
But making threats against anyone who has dared to cross him or has merely roused his ire is a longtime Trump characteristic.
In 2010, Tarla Makaeff, a former customer of Trump’s real-estate seminar business, filed a fraud lawsuit against now-defunct Trump University.
Trump retaliated by filing a defamation suit against her. The case was dismissed by a judge. But Trump continued to attack her during his Presidential candidacy.
During a campaign rally he assailed her as a “horrible, horrible witness,” and then posted on Twitter that she was “Disgraceful!”
Makaeff ultimately persuaded the judge presiding over the Trump University case to let her remove her name as a plaintiff.
Trump has long employed a series of hardball tactics against anyone who threatens his ego:
- Countersuits, threats and personal insults against outsiders; and
- Stringent confidentiality agreements against employees, business partners, his former spouses and now his campaign staffers.
As an authoritarian who demands the right to craft his own image. Trump furiously denies others the right to dissent from it.
In February, 2016, Trump said that he was “gonna open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”
After the New York Times published pages from his 1995 tax return, Trump tweeted that his lawyers “want to sue the failing @nytimes so badly for irresponsible intent. I said no (for now), but they are watching. Really disgusting.”
Trump claims the tax return was illegally obtained. The Times says it received it from an anonymous source with a return address at Trump Tower.
Trump is a master of “dog whistle” threats. On August 9, he falsely told a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina: “Hillary [Clinton] wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment.
“If she gets to pick her [Supreme Court] judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Hillary Clinton
The Clinton camp instantly saw it as a “dog-whistle” solicitation for political assassination.
“Don’t treat this as a political misstep,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, who has called for stiffer gun laws, wrote on Twitter. “It’s an assassination threat, seriously upping the possibility of a national tragedy & crisis.”
“This is no longer about policy, civility, decency or even temperament. This is a direct threat of violence against a political rival,” wrote longtime broadcast journalist Dan Rather in a lengthy Facebook post.
“Many have tried to do a side-shuffle and issue statements saying they strongly disagree with his rhetoric but still support the candidate. That is becoming woefully insufficient. The rhetoric is the candidate.”
Trump–and his apologists–claimed he was simply “joking.”
But Trump was not done with making threats against Hillary Clinton–and her husband, Bill.
Donald Trump
On October 7, The Washington Post leaked a video of Donald Trump making sexually predatory comments about women (“I don’t even wait. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything”).
The remarks came during a 2005 exchange with Billy Bush, then the host of Access Hollywood.
The admissions ignited a firestorm against Trump, even among many Republicans.
Rather than accept responsibility for his actions, Trump blamed the Clintons–who had nothing to do with the release.
Speaking before a rally in Pennsylvania on October 10, Trump threatened: “If they wanna release more tapes saying inappropriate things, we’ll continue to talk about Bill and Hillary Clinton doing inappropriate things. There are so many of them, folks.”
In making this threat, Trump demonstrated:
- That there may be more evidence of his predatory actions toward women; and
- Like a terrorist, he is willing to harm others in a fit of anger or to demonstrate his capacity for cruelty.
And this is the man millions of Right-wing Americans want to entrust with the nuclear button.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics on September 15, 2016 at 12:10 am
Right-wing websites and networks are gleefully buzzing with theories about the state of Hillary Clinton’s health.
The former First Lady, New York U.S. Senator and Secretary of State collapsed after briefly attending a memorial ceremony on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
The unsubstantiated theories include stroke, brain damage, Multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.
But there’s one theory Right-wingers scrupulously refuse to offer: That Clinton might be a victim of poisoning by Donald Trump’s well-known admirer, Vladimir Putin.
It’s a theory that has been offered by no less than Bennet Ifeakandu Omalu, the Nigerian-American physician, forensic pathologist and neuropathologist who was the first to discover and publish findings of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in American football players.
Bennet Ifeakandu Omalu
His struggle to alert the National Football League to that danger met with hostility and derision. Finally, amid growing scrutiny from Congress, the NFL was forced to take the concussion issue more seriously.
NFL owners banned players from striking opponents with the crowns of their helmets. Meanwhile, the NFL is facing concussion lawsuits from nearly 4,000 former players.
On September 11, a Clinton rep stated that she was suffering from pneumonia–and Omalu warned on Twitter: “I must advice the Clinton campaign to perform toxicologic analysis of Mrs. Clinton’s blood. It is possible she is being poisoned.”
And he followed this up with a second tweet: “I do not trust Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. With those two all things are possible.”
At this point, there is no evidence that Hillary Clinton is the victim of KGB “wet” methods. And it would take lengthy, sophisticated toxicology tests to hopefully learn the truth.
But there is plenty of evidence that Vladimir Putin has used murder–especially poison–to eliminate his opponents.
Vladimir Putin
Putin came to power in 2000. Since then, at least 34 journalists have been murdered in Russia, according to the Moscow-based Glasnost Defense Foundation. Many of the suspected killers are military officials, government officials or political groups.
Being a political opponent of Vladimir Putin can also be dangerous. Among the casualties:
Viktor Yushchenko: In 2004, he was running for president of the Ukraine against Putin’s chosen candidate, Victor Yanukovych.
As the campaign neared its climax, Yushchenko suddenly fell ill–with dioxin poisoning. Flown to Vienna’s Rudolfinerhaus clinic for treatment, he survived, but his face was left greatly disfigured. He went on to win the election, serving as Ukraine’s president from 2005 to 2010.
Aleksandr Litvinenko: A former KGB officer, he had accused Putin of wholesale corruption. Even worse, he charged that–as a pretext for a second war with Chechnya–Putin ordered the bombings of Moscow apartment buildings, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people.
Aleksandr Litvinenko
Litvinenko died on November 23, 2006 in London from a dose of Polonium-210 in his tea. At the time, he was meeting with two Moscow agents, one of whom is now a member of the State Duma.
Boris Nemtsov: An official with a liberal opposition group, he had been arrested several times for speaking against Putin’s government.
Nemtsov had been scheduled to lead an opposition rally in Moscow. But on February 27, 2015, two days before the event, he was shot dead as he walked home from dinner. The killing happened a short distance from the Kremlin.
If Hillary Clinton proved to have a serious medical condition such as Parkinson’s or Multiple sclerosis, the results would be tragic but strictly national.
Mounting pressure within and outside the Democratic party would force her to drop out of the race.
There would be a brief, furious struggle within the Democratic party for the nomination–most likely between Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and Tim Kaine, Clinton’s choice for Vice President. The winner would face Donald Trump in the coming debates and fall election.
And the Clintons–a force in American politics since 1992–would finally leave the national stage.
But if Hillary is a victim of a KGB assassination attempt, as Dr. Bennet Omalu suspects, then the consequences would be national and international.
Hillary Clinton
Nationally, such a discovery would almost certainly generate huge sympathy for Clinton–a woman singularly unable to arouse sympathy among voters. That alone could ensure her election as President.
And even Americans who hate Clinton would never forgive Russia for daring to interfere with an American Presidential election. They would demand severe retaliation–even all-out war.
For Trump, it would prove a nightmare. He’s made too many admiring statements about Putin to disavow them now and be believed.
National outrage followed in July when Trump invited Putin to “find the 30,000 emails that are missing” on the private server that Clinton used as Secretary of State.
If Clinton died–or was simply injured–because of a KGB plot, few would believe Trump wasn’t a party to it.
And several of Trump’s closest associates have had ties to Putin, such as his former campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Even many Republicans have already declared they can’t support Trump in abandoning NATO–much less his clear admiration for Putin, a dictator who got his start as a KGB agent.
At his first press conference upon becoming President, Ronald Reagan harshly denounced Soviet leaders: “They reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat.”
A KGB plot against Hillary Clinton would convince many Americans that Republican leaders have become as corrupt as those in the Kremlin.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics on September 14, 2016 at 12:09 am
September 11 marked the 15th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in American history.
The date when, in 2001, two highjacked, fuel-laden jetliners slammed into the “twin towers” of the World Trade Center in New York City and a third crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
A fourth, intended for the White House or Capitol Building, was prevented from doing so by the heroic resistance of its passengers. The highjackers crashed it into a field in Pennsylvania.
World Trade Center on September 11, 2001
For Hillary Clinton, former First Lady and Secretary of State, and now the Democratic party’s Presidential nominee, this was to be a day of memorial events.
Instead, it turned out to be her worst nightmare as a Presidential candidate.
Scheduled to attend a 9/11 ceremony in New York City, she cut short her appearance around 9:30 a.m. because she felt “overheated,” according to campaign spokesman Nick Merrill.
Amateur video captured Clinton struggling to stand and needing help to enter her Secret Service van. A woman held Clinton’s left arm as the van approached. Then two men grabbed both of her arms as her knees buckled.
Hillary Clinton being helped into her van
Shortly before noon, Clinton left the apartment of her daughter, Chelsea. Wearing sunglasses, she waved to diners at a nearby restaurant.
“I’m feeling great, it’s a beautiful day in New York,” she said. Then she headed to her home in Chappaqua.
The official statement given by her campaign went:
“Secretary Clinton attended the September 11th Commemoration Ceremony for just an hour and thirty minutes this morning to pay her respects and greet some of the families of the fallen. During the ceremony, she felt overheated so departed to go to her daughter’s apartment, and is feeling much better.”
Several hours later, her doctor announced that Clinton was suffering from pneumonia.
Throughout the campaign, Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump has attacked her mental and physical and fitness to be President.
Donald Trump
The 9/11 incident has hugely amplified those questions–and concerns. She not only abruptly left the ceremony, but nobody in her campaign told reporters traveling with her about her condition or whereabouts for 90 minutes after she left the ceremony.
In 2015, Clinton, then 67, released a two-page letter from her doctor stating that she was in good health despite a blood clot and a 2012 concussion.
But that hasn’t prevented conspiracy theorists from flooding the Internet that she is stricken with a vast array of unsubstantiated ailments, such as:
-
Multiple sclerosis
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Parkinson’s disease
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Brain damage
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Stroke
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Brain cancer
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Post-Concussion Syndrome
The Right has salivated over the prospect of its longtime rival being yanked off the political stage, as it were, by a shepherd’s crook of deteriorating health.
Among these celebrations:
The National Enquirer: “Failing health and a deadly thirst for power are driving Hillary Clinton to an early grave.” The article–dated September 30, 2015–claimed she would be dead in six months.
Fox & Friends: Hosts Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy claimed that Clinton’s glasses proved “a sign of brain damage and other things.”
InfoWars: “Coughing can be a symptom of so many different illnesses…it is interesting to note that it happens to be one of the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease.”
Hannity: Fox News Medical Correspondent Dr. Marc Siegel said that a video showing Clinton laughing with reporters suggested that she might be having a “mini-seizure.” Siegel added that Clinton might still suffer from “post-concussion syndrome”–after a 2012 concussion–which could affect balance, impair memory and cause dizziness.
Yet there is one conspiracy theory that is conspicuously absent from Right-wing websites and networks.
And this is because it points to a connection that Republicans–and especially Donald Trump–want to ignore.
The ties between Trump and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin
Putin’s admiration for Trump is no secret.
“He is a bright personality, a talented person, no doubt about it. It is not up to us to appraise his positive sides, it is up to the U.S. voters. but, as we can see, he is an absolute leader in the presidential race.
“He is saying that he wants to move to a different level of relations with Russia, to a closer, deeper one. How can we not welcome that? Of course, we welcome that.”
Nor is Trump’s admiration for Putin.
“It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.”
Appearing on the December 18, 2015 edition of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Trump said of Putin: “He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader. Unlike what we have in this country.”
When Trump praised Putin as a leader–“unlike what we have in this country”–he meant President Barack Obama.
But Putin may have serious reasons for flattering Trump.
Trump believes the United States is paying too much of the money needed to maintain the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance. He wants other members to contribute far more. He has said that, unless they do, under a Trump Presidency, they would be on their own if attacked by Russia.
The withdrawal of the United States from NATO would instantly render that alliance kaput.
For Putin, this clearly signals a reason to prefer Trump to Clinton.
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In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Politics, Social commentary on August 15, 2016 at 1:03 am
August is the month for…assassination. Or at least for advocating—and dramatizing—it.
On August 9, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump told a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina: “Hillary [Clinton] wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment.
“If she gets to pick her [Supreme Court] judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Donald Trump
The Clinton camp instantly saw it as a “dog-whistle” solicitation for political assassination:
“Don’t treat this as a political misstep,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, who has called for stiffer gun laws, wrote on Twitter. “It’s an assassination threat, seriously upping the possibility of a national tragedy & crisis.”
“A person seeking to be the President of the United States should not suggest violence in any way,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement.
The Trump campaign issued a statement denying that he had meant any such thing.
Three days after Trump’s remarks, Operation Antrhopoid, a UK-French-Czech historical film, appeared in theaters. Directed by Sean Ellis, it stars Cillian Murphy, Jamie Dornan, Charlotte Le Bon and Bill Milner.
Its subject: The 1942 assassination of SS Obergruppenführer (General) Reinhard Heydrich.
For Trump it was a moment of supreme, if unnoticed, irony.
“The constant violent, brutish talk from Donald Trump,” said Michael Steel, a top adviser to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, “is unworthy of the office he seeks.”
Political violence has long been a feature of Trump’s campaign. During the primaries, he openly endorsed retaliation against protesters who disrupted his rallies, many of whom accused him of racism.
Reinhard Heycrich
And Heydrich—“the man with the iron heart,” as Adolf Hitler eulogized at his funeral—similarly earned a reputation for brutality and racism.
A tall, blond-haired formal naval officer, he was both a champion fencer and talented violinist. Heydrich joined the Schutzstaffel, or Protective Squads, better known as the SS, in 1931, and quickly became head of its counterintelligence service.
In 1934, he oversaw the “Night of the Long Knives” purge of Hitler’s brown-shirted S.A., or Stormtroopers.
The S.A. had been instrumental in securing Hitler’s rise to Chancellor of Germany in 1933. They had intimidated political opponents and organized mass rallies for the Nazi Party. But after Hitler attained power, he saw them as a liability.
In September, 1941, Heydrich was appointed “Reich Protector” of Czechoslovakia, which had fallen prey to Germany in 1938 but whose citizens were growing restless under Nazi rule.
Heydrich immediately ordered a purge, executing 92 people within the first three days of his arrival in Prague. By February, 1942, 4,000-5,000 people had been arrested.
In January, 1942, Heydrich convened a meeting of high-ranking political and military leaders to streamline “the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”
Up until that time, the Nazis had been unable to agree on a comprehensive anti-Jewish policy. Some had argued for the “mere” expulsion of Jews from Germany while others advocated their wholesale extermination.
At the now-infamous Wannsee conference, Heydrich decreed that, henceforth, all Jews in Reich-occupied territories would be shipped to extermination camps. No exceptions would be made for women, children or the infirm.
An estimated six million Jews were thus slaughtered.
Returning to Prague, Heydrich continued his policy of carrot-and-stick with the Czechs—improving the social security system and requisitioning luxury hotels for middle-class workers, alternating with arrests and executions.
The Czech government-in-exile, headquartered in London, feared that Heydrich’s incentives might lead the Czechs to passively accept domination. They decided to assassinate Heydrich.
Two British-trained Czech commandos—Jan Kubis and Joseph Gabcik—parachuted into Prague.
With limited intelligence on Heydrich’s movements and little equipment in a city under lockdown, they had to find a way to carry out their assignment.
Unexpectedly, they got help from Heydrich himself. Supremely arrogant, he traveled the same route every day from home to his downtown office and refused to be escorted by armed guards, claiming no one would dare attack him.
On May 27, 1942, Kubis and Gabcik waited at a hairpin turn in the road always taken by Heydrich. When Heydrich’s Mercedes slowed down, Gabcik raised his machinegun–which jammed.
Instead of ordering his driver to “step on it,” Heydrich ordered him to halt—so he could take aim at his would-be assassins.
Rising in his seat, he aimed his revolver at Gabcik—as Kubis lobbed a hand grenade at the car. The explosion drove steel and leather fragments of the car’s upholstery into Heydrich’s diaphragm, spleen and lung.
Hitler dispatched doctors from Berlin to save the Reich Protector. But infection set in, and on June 4, Heydrich died at age 38.
For Donald Trump, the timing of Operation Antrhopoid couldn’t be worse.
Trump has long been accused of being a racist and would-be dictator. Facebook routinely carries memes of him wearing a Nazi uniform, complete with Hitler forelock and toothbrush mustache.
It is Trump who raised the issue of using assassination to attain political ends. The last thing he needs is a movie showing that Right-wingers can also be targets for death.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 11, 2016 at 1:05 am
Donald Trump’s “dog-whistle” solicitation for the political assassination of Hillary Clinton has been decried as unprecedented. In fact, it is anything but.
Repeatedly, Republicans have aimed violent–and violence-arousing–rhetoric at their Democratic opponents.
This is not a case of careless language that is simply misinterpreted, with tragic results.
Republicans like former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin–and Trump–fully understand the constituency they are trying to reach: Those masses of alienated, uneducated Americans who live only for their guns and hard-line religious beliefs–and who can be easily manipulated by perceived threats to either.
Sarah Palin’s “Crosshairs” Map
If a “nutcase” assaults a Democratic politician and misses, then the Republican establishment claims to be shocked–shocked!–that such a thing could have happened.
And if the attempt proves successful, then Republicans weep crocodile tears for public consumption.
The difference is that, in the latter case, they rejoice in knowing that Democratic ranks have been thinned and their opponents are even more on the defensive, for fear of the same happening to them.
The most important target of these intended assaults has been President Barack Obama.
In August, 2009, about a dozen people carrying guns, including one with a military-style rifle, milled among protesters outside a Phoenix convention center where President Obama was giving a speech.
Anti-Obama poster
A week earlier, during Obama’s healthcare town hall in New Hampshire, a man carrying a sign reading “It is time to water the tree of liberty” stood outside with a pistol strapped to his leg.
Fred Solop, a Northern Arizona University political scientist, said the incidents in New Hampshire and Arizona could signal the beginning of a disturbing trend.
“When you start to bring guns to political rallies, it does layer on another level of concern and significance,” Solop said. “It actually becomes quite scary for many people. It creates a chilling effect in the ability of our society to carry on honest communication.”
But now that Hillary Clinton has become the official Democratic Presidential nominee, Republican hatred has moved from Obama to her. Shouts of “Lock her up!” thundered at the Republican National Convention which nominated Donald Trump.
In July, Trump called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to hack into U.S. State Department emails to “find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”
And now Trump has called on literally hair-triggered gun fanatics to remove his political rival.
The way to prevent such tragedies in the future is to hold fully accountable not just the shooters but those who deliberately point them toward their targets and repeatedly scream: “Kill the traitors!”
Americans must shed their naive belief that “America is exempt from the political corruption of other countries.” And they must see the Republicans’ lust for absolute power at any price as the danger it presents to the future of the Republic.
Among the steps that need to be taken:
First, the families and friends of the Tucson massacre victims should file civil lawsuits against Sarah Palin and every other Republican who can be proved to have created the firestorm of hate that consumed 20 people on January 8, 2011.
A legal precedent for such lawsuits emerged 20 years ago, and still remains viable.
On November 13, 1988, in Portland, Oregon, three white supremacist members of East Side White Pride and White Aryan Resistance (WAR) beat to death Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian man who came to the United States to attend college.
Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a civil suit (Berhanu v. Metzger) against Tom Metzger, founder of WAR. They argued that WAR influenced Seraw’s killers by encouraging their group, East Side White Pride, to commit violence.
At the trial, WAR national vice president Dave Mazzella testified how the Metzgers instructed WAR members to commit violence against minorities.
Tom and John Metzger were found civilly liable under the doctrine of vicarious liability, in which one can be liable for a tort committed by a subordinate or by another person who is taking instructions.
In October 1990, the jury returned the largest civil verdict in Oregon history at the time–$12.5 million–against Metzger and WAR. The Metzgers’ house was seized, and most of WAR’s profits go to paying off the judgment.
Second, the FBI and Justice Department should launch an all-out investigation into not simply right-wing hate groups but those political leaders who openly or secretly encourage and support their activities. Those who are found doing so should be vigorously indicted and prosecuted under the anti-terrorism statutes.
Third, the Secret Service should immediately adopt the policy that no one but sworn law enforcement officers will be allowed to carry firearms within the immediate vicinity of the President. And it should enforce that policy through its elite counter-sniper teams.
Finally, President Obama should do what President Bill Clinton refused to do at the time of the 1995 truck-bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building: He should publicly condemn those Republicans who give “aid and comfort” to the right-wing extremists whose support they openly court.
Unless such steps are taken, Right-wing candidates like Donald Trump will continue to solicit the murder of their political opponents. And those outrages will continue until a Republican version of the swastika permanently flies over the capitol dome and the White House.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 10, 2016 at 12:12 am
“Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment,” Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump told a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina.
That in itself was untrue, but what followed was worse.
“If she gets to pick her [Supreme Court] judges,” said Trump, “nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Donald Trump
The Clinton camp instantly saw it as a “dog-whistle” solicitation for political assassination.
Virginia U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, Clinton’s vice presidential running mate, said: “Nobody who is seeking a leadership position, especially the presidency, the leadership of the country, should do anything to countenance violence, and that’s what he was saying.”
The Trump campaign, of course, denied that he had meant any such thing.
According to a statement from the Trump campaign: “It’s called the power of unification–2nd Amendment people have amazing spirit and are tremendously unified, which gives them great political power. And this year, they will be voting in record numbers, and it won’t be for Hillary Clinton, it will be for Donald Trump.”
Increasingly, Republicans have repeatedly aimed violent–and violence-arousing–rhetoric at their Democratic opponents. This is not a case of careless language that is simply misinterpreted, with tragic results.
Republicans like former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin fully understand the constituency they are trying to reach: Those masses of alienated, uneducated Americans who live only for their guns and hardline religious beliefs–and who can be easily manipulated by perceived threats to either.
If a “nutcases” assaults a Democratic politician and misses, then the Republican establishment claims to be shocked–shocked!–that such a thing could have happened.
And if the attempt proves successful–as the January 8, 2011 Tucson shootings of Arizona’s Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and chief U.S. District judge, John Roll did–then Republicans weep crocodile tears for public consumption.
The difference is that, in the latter case, they rejoice in knowing that Democratic ranks have been thinned and their opponents are even more on the defensive, for fear of the same happening to them.
Consider the following:
- Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Tex.) yelled “baby killer” at Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) on the House floor.
- Florida GOP Congressional candidate Allen West, referring to his Democratic opponent, Rep. Ron Klein, told Tea Party activists: You’ve got to make the fellow scared to come out of his house. That’s the only way that you’re going to win. That’s the only way you’re going to get these people’s attention.”
- Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) said Tea Partiers had “every right” to use racist and homophobic slurs against Democrats, justifying it via Democrats’ “totalitarian tactics.”
- Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) said she wanted her constituents “armed and dangerous” against the Obama administration.
- Sarah Palin told her supporters: “Get in their face and argue with them. No matter how tough it gets, never retreat, instead RELOAD!”
- Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter: “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.”
- Senator Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) “We’re going to keep building the party until we’re hunting Democrats with dogs.”
- Rep. Louisa M. Slauter (D-NY) received a phone message threatening sniper attacks against lawmakers and their families.
For more than 50 years, Republicans have vilified government–except when they controlled it. They have sought to convince Americans that Democrats are at least potential traitors, if not actual ones.
Among the slanders Republicans have routinely hurled at Democrats:
- Democrats are plotting to “take away your guns.”
- Democrats are “anti-work” and want to turn America into a welfare-dependent society.
- Democrats are “Godless” and want to force atheism on believing Christians.
- Democrats will allow United Nations “black helicopters” to stage a military takeover of the United States..
During the 1992 Presidential campaign, Republicans tried to paint Bill Clinton as a brainwashed “Manchurian candidate” because he had briefly visited the Soviet Union during his college years.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Republicans lost their “soft on Communism” slander-line. So they tried to persuade voters that Democrats were “soft on crime.”
When riots flared in 1992 after the acquittal of LAPD officers who had savagely beaten Rodney King, President George H.W. Bush blamed the carnage on the “Great Society” programs of the 1960s.
When President Barack Obama set out to provide healthcare for all Americans–and not simply the wealthy–Republicans tried to frighten voters with lies.
The most infamous of these was that healthcare reform would lead to wholesale murder by government “death panels,” as Sarah Palin put it.
Republicans have since encouraged right-wing groups to claim that Obama was not born in Hawaii, but in Kenya. The reason: To strip Obama of legitimacy as a leader.
Republicans–brandishing photos of President Obama bearing a Hitler forelock and toothbrush mustache–have claimed he intends to set up concentration camps for those who disagree with him.
Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House, charged that Obama was pursuing a socialist agenda to reform healthcare.
In his book, To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine, Gingrich claimed that Obama’s policy agenda was as “great a threat to America as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.”
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AMERICA’S POISONED CUBAN LEGACY: PART FOUR (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 2, 2016 at 12:02 am“John and Robert Kennedy knew what they were doing. They waged a vicious war against Fidel Castro–a war someone had to lose.”
And the loser turned out to be John F. Kennedy.
So writes investigative reporter Gus Russo in Live By the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK, published in 1998.
In what is almost certainly the definitive account of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Russo reaches some startling–but highly documented–conclusions:
Another book well worth reading about America’s Cuban obsession during the early 1960s is American Tabloid, by James Ellroy.
Although a novel, it vividly captures the atmosphere of intrigue, danger and sleaziness that permeated that era in a way that dry, historical documents never can.
“The 50’s are finished,” reads its paperback dust jacket. “Zealous young lawyer Robert Kennedy has a red-hot jones to nail Jimmy Hoffa. JFK has his eyes on the Oval Office.
“J. Edgar Hoover is swooping down on the Red Menace. Howard Hughes is dodging subpoenas and digging up Kennedy dirt. And Castro is mopping up the bloody aftermath of his new Communist nation….
“Mob bosses, politicos, snitches, psychos, fall guys and femmes fatale. They’re mixing up a Molotov cocktail guaranteed to end the country’s innocence with a bang.”
Among the legacies of America’s twisted romance with anti-Castro Cubans:
The Cuban Missile Crisis remains the single most dangerous moment of the 50-year Cold War, when the world stood only minutes away from nuclear Armageddon.
That crisis stemmed from the American Right’s twisted obsession with Cuba, an obsession that continues today.
So what are the lessons to be learned from that obsession?
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